As a resident company with ACCESS THEATRE, we are continuing to develop ASYLUM and excited to announce performances July 10 - 30, 2017ASYLUM was first presented in conjunction with New Light Theater Project's Darkroom Series

ASYLUM

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. -Dalai LamaWith Asylum, New Dance Theatre explores the gestures of living in a world of stigma, and how we can find the compassion we need to feel -- if not healthy -- at least human.

Devised by the company members of New Dance Theatre, ASYLUM features original choreography created by members of the company. As a company, we explore where the pedestrian and the profound meet, where what is unspoken is revealed through gesture and dance. As our doctor (Jim Anderson) reveals, “the first thing to depart in mental illness is the familiar. And what takes it’s place is bad news, because not only can you not understand it, you also cannot communicate it to other people.” (Phillip K. Dick). This is our profound world that lives parallel to the pedestrian world of case-studies, clinical examination and therapy, expressed in a unique blend of dance, gesture, poetry.

Asylum: haven, shelter, inviolable refuge. Those diagnosed with mental illness are often without just that, a safe place, a haven, a shelter. The prevalent attitudes towards and stigma of mental illness can make those who need help less likely to seek it, feeling more and more isolated and alone. With ASYLUM, we seek to shift the perception, open the doors to witness the power of compassionate acts.